Mail

A bunch of ice cubes tossed into a mail box or newspaper delivery tube on a warm day will make the mark’s reading very soggy.

CP from New York deals with magazine editors who can be very rude about not answering their mail. He turned to a rather gross campaign to get the attention of one particuarly rude female editorette. After several polite letters and calls, she had not responded or even acknowledged that she was holding one of his article that he wanted back.

So, he sent her a cute note all done up in frilly paper and included a little product sample with it. Here’s how CP’s note read: “Last night I coughed up a lot of phlegm, mucus and snot into a saucer. This morning I found three cockroaches eating that gooey mess. Somehow that brought you to mind.”

CP signed the note, then mailed it and the sample to the editor. No response. But he wasn’t finished either.

“At the time I had a friend who believed the most effective way to diet after a great meal was to vomit it back up. So getting a sample was no problem. I packaged that up in a large baggie and sent it off the the editor with a note that said, `You make me very sick. Need proof? Here it is!”‘

“Finally, after I sent her a little cage full of two-inch waterbugs and cockroaches, she called me with all sorts of threats about mail harassment. We never did settle my article claims, but I had all the reward I wanted just listening to her rant and rave.”

CP calls his next idea the Blank Page technique. It’s very simple. You just send your mark a piece of paper. Nothing else. It works on the human tendency to imagine things as being worse than they really are. In the event there is a letterhead design you can use with this that would feed the mark’s paranoia, then, by all means, use it.

In a modification of that, an old buisness associate of mine used to send second pages of letters to people he wanted to harass. He’d put in some vague summary of something personally or legally important on that second page, then end with some directive requiring immediate action `or else.’ It was damned frustrating because the mark never knew who sent the letter or why it was really important.

Be aware that using the U.S. Postal Service as your personal messenger for the fist of revenge can backfire. An Illinois man, Steve Jones was arrested by police after he conducted a mail barrage against his neighbor, Kenneth Gibbons.

“We got 90 percent of all the magazines ever published,” Gibbons told reporters. “We also got pornography, real estate deal offers, record clubs, book clubs, aluminum siding deals, you name it. If it came in the mail, we got it.”

The two had feuded over a property easement since 1977, and Mr. Jones spent 1981 getting even by using the mails. Apparently Mr. Jones wasn’t too clever and was too open. Police easily cracked the case and indicted Mr. Jones. Pending trial, he was free on $50,000 bond and was facing up to five years in the federal slammer.

As the friendly and fatherly precinct sargeant says each week in *Hill Street Blues*, “Hey, let’s be careful out there.” Damn good advice these days as you never know whose side true justice is on.

But sometimes we do. In this case, the weed of direct mail bore bitter fruit. Three Illinois college students were arrested for orchestrating a Nazi motif hate-mail campaign against a Jewish chap who owned a tire shop.

What the young men did was send 100 Western Union mailgrams to Jewish folks in the Chicago area. The Mailgrams carried the following message: “Weiss Tire Company regrets to inform you that we must deny your request for credit after it was determined you are Semitic./signed/Dr. Josef Mengele.”

Dr. Menegele was the infamous Nazi doctor who performed ghastly, inhumane medical experiments in WWII concentration camps. In addition to the mailgrams, phony orders for such items as swastikas were placed in the name of Mr. Weiss’s company, and bogus ads for used tires at outrageously low prices were placed in area newspapers under the Weiss logo.

Two things are not known about this case:
(1) What, if anything, did Mr. Weiss do to deserve this treatment?
(2) How and why did the three young men get caught? If the response to the first question is “nothing,” then obviously, Mr. Weiss should be reading Hayduke books in his fight for vengeance.

I stress again, this article is for victims, to help them fight back against the bullies of any political, racial, religious, sexual, ethnic, or other persuasion.

Spam Mail and More Revenge Ideas

All you need to do to put your mark in business is buy a couple of ads in the classified sections of the sleazy magazines on sale at your local newsstand or sold through the mail. Set up your mark in the business of providing sex by mail or telephone. Offer a free first call or something else to shill the customers. Be sure to make your ad copy as lustful as possible, especially if your mark is female. Most guys really run their logic circuits on overload if they think they’re going to score for this natural biological weakness which occurs in the male species.

Do you need to get someone on a lot of mailinglists or to flood them with samples, introductory offers and subscriptions? There is at least one company that provides all the ammunition for this valuable weapon in your trickster’s arsenal. It’s called Executive Management, and you will be using their “Direct Media Card Deck” division.

Using a selected nom de mark, order one of the “decks.” What you’ll get is a plastic-packed deck of direct-mail inquiry cards from various businesses offering myriad services and products. All are pre-addressed to your mark and most have prepaid postage. All you do is select appropriate cards, check a few boxes, then mail. They have a lot of different “deck” selections, as this is a clearing house for promotions, so work this gold mine well and often.

At last, I’ve finally discovered a positive use of advertising circulars, i.e., you can help your enemies by ordering self-help books for them. Here’s the idea. Rob your mark’s mailbox of fliers from book-clearing remainder houses, sales outlets, and liquidation sales centers. You then use the adhesive stickers on the order blank to “order” books for your mark on a COD basis.

You can add insult to injury by selecting books that slap the mark’s ego, e.g., 30 Days to a Real Bustline, Flatten that Fanny, Home Cure Your Herpes. You get the idea. Or try to pick books that are totally inappropriate to your mark’s lifestyle, biases, etc. On another scale, the postal one, here is a stunt that is hardly new and dozens of people have suggested it so I imagine it is working well. Let’s share it with the rest of the masses. Here’s how to mail letters to friends for free. Simply reverse the sender and the sendee name/address, and use no postage stamp.

And speaking of envelopes, you can always use a good supply of postage-paid envelopes, according to governmental consultant Joseph Porta. Joe suggest you shop for a supply of these at government and military offices, corporate mailrooms, etc. He says using these with some common sense security guidelines really cuts down on your postal bills.

Here’s a nice twist on the old charge of address bit. This idea came from my old mail delivery man. Either change the mark’s address or give the mark a new address, using the existing address of some outfit like the Red Cross, YMCA or whatever. Or, you can change the address of the YMCA, Red Cross, etc. to your mark’s home or business address. Whichever you do, the idea is to bury the mark with high-volume mail delivery. The confusion of getting all of this straightened out will be a delight, too.

Some more Mail payback ideas

The Ku Klux Klan has some interesting strategies for spreading terror. One of these is to collect from regional newspapers clippings of unsolved arsons (or robberies, rapes, burglaries, assaults, etc.). If you need to fatten the file, include clips from national publications too. Place the clips in a manila envelope and tape it to an old gasoline can (or ax, bra, shotgun shell, jimmy bar, etc.), which you leave on your mark’s home or office doorstep.

David Williams is the pen name of a Texas state legislator who spends his working hours as a freelance writer. He told about Jim Boren (pen name of a friend), whose great idea for practical joking was to send single-entendre postal cards bearing personal, sexual, or medical messages to William’s home.

“Since I met Jim Boren, I hide from my postman,” Williams notes.

Williams is not Boren’s only victim. Many of his friends suffer from postal cards such as the bogus Playboy Towers Memo that pointed out, “Davie boy, thanks for taking care of my friend while she was in Austin. I was envious when she told me how things went down. Love, Elvira.”

Or this hotel postcard came from Hong Kong, addressed to Williams via his pen name at his real address: “She’s no longer at the topless bar. But her sister at the massage parlor thinks she went to Seoul. I can pursue it at the embassy, but will have to disclose your personal interest. Please advise.”

It is signed by J. Harley, identified by a return address as “Harley’s Detective Agency” in New Orleans. There is no Harley, no agency, no nothing at the return addresses.

Jim also sends cards to people’s wives. One said: “Sorry, couldn’t make it this time. My wife came along.”

One of Harley’s better efforts at postal assassination was this gem, sent from Toronto: “Thanks for your help with the bail money. You done better by me than President Nixon did by his boys for doing about the same thing. If I get the book thrown at me later, I’ll ride it out, but I want a written agreement on the money and I don’t want you saying ugly things about me in the papers if they learn about your personal role in this.”

From Cleveland, Jim Boren sent David Williams this postcard: “The cops found your name and address in one of the girls’ diaries. They may be in touch soon. — A friend.”

This next stunt is also accomplished through the mail. Posing as a medical researcher, Elmer Surehe says, you can probably con some crablice eggs from a supply house, for a price, of course. The eggs are inserted with an innocuous business letter into an envelope addressed personally to the mark. When the mark opens and unfolds the letter, the lice eggs drop onto his/her clothing and surroundings.

It would make sense that nothing in this letter connect back to you, of course. Some people have used the name and return address of another mark. The resulting confusion will ensure that two marks are unhappy.

A critic felt that this tactic would be unfair because an innocent secretary, business associate, or spouse might intercept the letter and receive the dose. Two observations — first, people shouldn’t read personal mail addressed to other people; and second, sometimes the innocent must scratch along with the guilty.

A pulled-punch version of the lice-eggs letter is to use itching powder instead. It’s easily available from novelty stores, or you can make your own following the directions printed in some of the formula books available. Sneezing powder is another alternative.

A suggestion for a nastier ingredient came in from a former agent of the American intelligence community who got paid a lot of money for planning and implementing things like this. He suggests a chemical tear-gas powder heavily laced into an envelope, noting, “It will clear a mailroom or an office in minutes.”